WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WHOLE PERSON?

Ok, so the last six weeks I've had trouble walking...actually been using a cane. Out of the blue I felt like a band wrapped around my left leg at the knee. PAIN!! Then it moved all around that area. Somehow I wound up at a neurologist who felt it was coming from my hip and my back where MRI's have proved there are definite problems....but my hip and my back were not keeping me from moving around. In fact I was still swimming every single morning. My knee was the problem!

Finally, pain is so intense I wind up in the emergency room. They tell me I've ruptured my 'baker's cyst'...does anyone out there know what that is? it seems we all have a bump behind our knee on the back of our legs known as 'baker cysts'. I was told that the fluid would be moving around for several weeks until it dried up and that in the meantime I should take the oxycodone that they gave me in order to keep on moving....Ohhhhh Kayyyy. No one seems to feel I should "get off my leg!"

Found a primary care female doctor who was something else! She has a formula that she goes by...first the examination, then a wait back in a waiting room...then what she calls an interview in which only she talks and inquires about medications only. Admittedly she did not like the look of my swollen leg (which I omitted to say was blown up like a balloon), and gives me a name of an orthopedic group.

A call there has them asking me what part of the body am I being seen about. I say basically the knee, but... NO BUTS!---they assign me a knee orthopedic guy. I see him. Prior to his entrance into the examining cubicle, I show the nurse the stuff I have brought with me: A CD from my back MRI's taken last spring; the hip MRI, and the results of the nerve test which the neurologist had done..(he claimed I have pinched nerves coming from my back and he also wanted me to see a hip surgeon ASAP). As soon as I begin my tale by uttering the word 'back' I hear the doctor in the hall say "I don't do backs!".

"Fine, but just maybe you want to know what's going on in my body that just may help you determine more about my knee", I say to myself.

When he actually enters the cubicle, I have had a knee x ray which he looks at (not me just the picture hanging) and he says it's simply arthritis. He then grabs the left side of my left knee and shoots me up with cortisone. He has never even looked or felt my knee or watched me move around before giving me the needle. Ten days later the leg is only a mite bit better.

My point here is...what the hell has happened to treating the 'whole person'??? Is not the "knee bone, connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to the hip bone..." as the song went. Pretty soon these orthopedic guys will only treat the index finger or the thumb or the pinky.

I have a 'Gynie' who has become very dear to me. That once a year visit still involves me talking about my life, year, etc. He treats me as a whole person.

Now I know most of you aren't trained therapists, but in any attempt to help the next person, one must inquire about other aspects going on in the person's life that may be impacting the problem. Certainly a back issue just may have some impact on a knee, a hip...maybe even a toe!

Now I'm looking forward to a top ortho guy who is from my hometown of Albany here at NYU Med...maybe he'll wanna know about my back, my hip, my ass or whatever else may be causing my knee to explode...if you see some knee parts floating on Broadway on the upper west side---it's probably mine.

PS: Whenever I stay off the leg for awhile...IT FEELS BETTER!!

Thanks for listening! And L'shanah tovah to all my wonderful Jewish friends.

Hoped you enjoyed this session.

Mimi Scott, Ph. D
212 721-2979
917 846-2449
mscott13@aol.com
mimi@drmimiscott.com